When we kicked off this Open Collective page, we were not expecting the world to be hit by a global pandemic. There were rumblings of the new coronavirus in Wuhan, China,  SARS-CoV-2, but most people around me didn't expect it to come to Europe. And we definitely didn't expect it to have such a huge effect on all our lives for the next two coming years.

As you can tell there's been no updates about this project since then, and it's because those of us who weren't burnt out already burned out immediately by the dread of lockdown and the pandemic. Apparently, at least in our case, when spoonies are hit with additional existential dread we can't just use the lockdown as a great time to work on a project.

So, everything quickly ground to a halt, and we quickly agreed to stop working. I do think that I, maloki, was hoping we'd be able to pick it back up, because it was a passion project of mine, and Florence / ForkOff forever in my heart.

Since then, there's been other projects doing really well, and filling the space we wanted to work in and I'd like to mention three of them here, so you can show them your support or follow their work. If I'll be putting any energy into development (in whatever contributing capacity) it will be towards one of these.

First, we have Home Town, which is a ligthweight Mastodon fork. Currently running on a few servers. Among other things it provides local posting and filters that can create Content Warnings for you, among other things. It's run by @[email protected]. The server where I mostly reside already switched over to run HomeTown, and a few others have followed too. You can support Darius' patreon if you want to support the project. 

Then, we have the project by the people who were pretty much harassed to no end and decided to call it quits with the fediverse until they had a better tool to rejoin, or build something different. Play Vicious, and the project Play Vicious 4. You can read more about the aims goals and aspirations on Ro's Patreon.

Last, we have GoToSocial, which provides a lightweight, customizable, and safety-focused entryway into the fediverse. It doesn't provide it's own interface, but rather you can use apps like Tusky (phone) or Pinafore (browser). It's run by dumpsterqueer/tobi and I really love that their focus is on safety. You can support GoToSocial on Liberapay.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how all of these projects evolve over the next few years. There's so much potential here, and I do hope that people both dare greatly when it comes to future forks, and future dev work in this space and others. 

Good luck out there, and thank you for all the support over the years.